Solicitor Celia Perry explains Land Registry’s role in property ownership.
What is Land Registry?
Property solicitor Celia Perry
Land Registry is a non-ministerial department of HM Government. Land Registry provides property owners with a land title guaranteed by the government.
Title (ownership) to most properties in England and Wales is registered with Land Registry so it has a pivotal role in property sales and purchases.
What does Land Registry do?
When you are selling your property Land Registry provides a copy of the title to the property and this can be relied upon by the buyer’s lawyers.
When you are buying a property Land Registry will register your purchase and any mortgage you have taken out over the property and will let your lawyers have a copy of the up-dated title once it has dealt with the registration.
How long does the process take?
A copy of the title to most properties can be obtained from Land Registry within a matter of minutes.
Registration of titles take much longer.
The latest figures available from Land Registry (February 2024) show that whilst some applications to update the register are completed within a matter of minutes, 40.05% of applications for changes to existing registered titles are taking longer than a month and in some cases more than 6 months.
If a new title has to be created because a new long lease has been granted out of an existing title or part of a title has been sold, Land Registry figures show that 67.26% of these more complex transactions are taking more than a year.
Can the process be speeded up?
Land Registry asks lawyers not to contact it with chasing requests as dealing with these enquiries this can take their officers away from dealing with the registrations and at Julie West Solicitors we will only contact Land Registry if it is absolutely essential.
Delays at Land Registry can cause problems for property owners if they want to sell or mortgage their property before Land Registry has finished dealing with the registration. In acknowledgment of this, Land Registry will consider a request for the application to be expedited but only where the delay in registration will cause significant legal, financial or personal issues for the property owner. When making a request for an application to be expedited Land Registry requires evidence clearly showing why the request for expedition is being made. It is not enough for a selling property owner to say they want to sell the property, a buyer must have been found and this can be shown by sending a copy of the estate agents memorandum of sale to Land Registry. If Land Registry agrees to expedite the application, it aims to process the application within 10 working days.
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